As artists like Nicki Minaj and Wiz Khalifa solidify their specific style to carve out a spot on the top 40 chart, they contribute their own unique qualities to the average pop song we may expect to hear on the radio. With such diversity, performers may fail to discover a niche that allows them to stand out. On his fourth studio album Wild Ones, however, Flo Rida demonstrates the height of his chosen technique—perfecting the average top 40 hit song.

“Good Feeling” and “Wild Ones,” which at this point in their popularity require no mention, epitomize this hip-hop-gone-pop formula. “Whistle,” the newest single from the LP serving as a rather explicit guideline for oral sex, has gathered considerable momentum on the charts, as well. Since Wild Ones barely runs for 30 minutes and contains only 9 songs, 3 singles nearing the top of the charts is an impressive statistic.

Flo Rida’s formula clearly fulfills its purpose. Nearly each track features a guest artist who contributes to the chorus while Flo Rida fills the gaps with rapid-fire rap lyrics, occasionally retreating to an R&B style. “Run,” for instance, has Redfoo delivering LMFAO’s signature quirky beats and lyrics repurposed from “Party Rock Anthem” that function well juxtaposed with Flo Rida’s unrelenting vocals.

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Summer is here! After wiping away the tears of seasonal affective disorder and compulsorily playing Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out”, you know it’s time to break open that long yearned for, sun-baked music you’ve been dreaming of during those dreary winter months. Los Angeles-based Best Coast, led by Bethany Cosentino, is a solid place to start. Although their new release, The Only Place, failed to dazzle, the group’s first album remains an unblemished example of blithe summer pop.

Best described as lo-fi surf pop, the band received a lot of attention in 2010 when they released their debut album Crazy For You. The album echoes with 50’s and 60’s aesthetic, evoking imagery of Chevy wagons laden with surfboards and tanned, skinny, long-haired, blonde boys. Cosentino described the sound as “California beach music with elements of the Ramones, 90’s alternative stuff, and early Beatles drumming.”

The group excels at writing simple, straightforward, pop songs with fuzzed out guitars and light lyrics. Cosentino sings about ephemeral topics, mostly boys, boredom, and the summer. There’s plenty of music out there to help you unravel all those complicated emotions inside you, but as Pitchfork put it, when “you’re lonely and bored and sitting there thinking about how you wish your cat could talk… Best Coast is there.”

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99 artists and 99 songs for $9.99. 99 metric tons of subtly-free symbolism crushing anyone willing to support the 99%. On May 15, Music For Occupy, a group claiming to be “in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street,” released Occupy This Album, a 4-disk compilation of previously unreleased tracks featuring several never-before-heard artists. Surprisingly, this supposed amalgamation of folk nonsense has attracted a disproportionate amount of media attention—Rolling Stone even called it an “A-list soundtrack” of the Occupy movement.

“What you call protest music, I like to call movement music,” said founder of Music For Occupy and executive producer of Occupy This Album Jason Samel. While the vast reach of the compilation lacks any form of cohesiveness that would be required for a solid LP, Samel’s idea holds true—each artist on the album donated a song to the movement without concern for the time spent or lack money earned. This box set is the product of a movement, not individual performers criticizing The Man.

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